For me, rift classic is vastly superior to Storm Legion.

I am disappointed by this addon and don't really understand where this "best expansion in mmo history" mindset comes from.

All these claims of so much content i can not agree with.

They game has 2 new continents, yes, but for me none of the new zones even remotely reach ember isle quality, not even the quality of some of the good rift classic zones ( shimmersand, freemarch, the guardian freemarch equivalent, IPP).

The zones feel stretched , have a pain in the butt terrain with no decent artistic style and feel like an amateur copy and paste job. The zones are simply way too big for the content they contain and the landscape makes no sense most of the time. It feels like cheese with pits and hills and bushes to me.
Ontop of it some terrain keeps popping and disappearing all the time.

Many of the quests which you receive from npcs require you to visit the same place 2-3 times. I thought such quest design died out with burning crusade...

Now lets get to the item progression system. They introduced an item-upgrade system. Now to get a single expert quality item requires up to 500-700 world event tokens, and you receive like 14 from killing a zone event boss. This along with absurd rep gain simply screams artifical prolonged grind.

I also enjoyed doing drrs with the server, but trion simply inflated the cost for the lures aswell. Now most drrs have all loot reserved or have some bidding system because of this, which in the long term will hurt the community.

I also enjoyed hunting for artifacts, which now in sl with the bad and spread out terrain is simply not nearly as fun as before, not to mention that they forgot to add decent rewards like many classic artifact sets had.

I also enjoyed the puzzles, which in SL are now tied to some artifact collections in order to unlock them, basically killing the fun of it.

I have a level 60 which i leveled the traditional way and 3 alts ranging from 53-56, which i exclusively leveled by doing pvp dailies, crafting quests and a random dungeon here and there, because i detest the new zones so much.

I do think that Sl has very good dungeons+raids and the housing system also seems innovative and fun, but it is simply inferior in all other areas compaired to classic rift to me.

An expansion for me should not be grindier than the original, build on its strengths (Ember isle quality zone design,dynamic content + drr availabillity, artifact hunting, instant adventures, gaming flow) and try to eliminate most of its weaknesses (rep grind, performance problems, itemization, token reward system grindiness, pvp)

In 1.10 i thought the 1 year+ sl deal was good value for money, now i dont and luckily i did not get it...

Once upon a time, when people ran DRRs early last year, loot was reserved almost 100% of the time to the guild that was providing the lure. I remember people paying plat and/or giving Corrupted Souls to the person with the lure in order to come to just get the DRR credit and MAYBE a chance to roll on the loot.

It's a new expansion where gear is needed by everyone. When people don't need the essences/loot anymore, you'll see less and less reserved over time. You're just too used to the mindset where no one needs gear because we got it through World Events or already bought the BIS ones from the vendors.

Your post just makes me feel you're not wanting to put forth any time or effort into the game to earn an item/reward/whatever. That seems to be your biggest qualm with the expansion.

I am completely puzzled by your post. Gear is easier than ever to obtain. I was raid-hit capped in two days after dinging 60. You can get almost raid ready by getting rewards from quests. You don't have to get every piece of gear from one activity. All you need to do is focusing on getting hit capped with all lvl 60 blue gear with enchants and you're basically ready to raid.

PvP gives gear. Dungeons give gear. AH has some pieces of blue. Heck, zone event bosses drop gear. World event gives gear. There are at least 2 ~ 5 crafted epics to get started. The new chronicle gives three items and about 2~3 lvl 60 blues. My rogue has two swords and a pair of pants - all epics. Drop rates are "acceptable" to me.

Did you do every story quest? My gods... the dream quest was awesome. The peladane quest chain...

I've been playing since beta. Loot has always been reserved in the beginning.

Heck, through gathering, I managed to accumulate 2k in plat. 60~75p for an essence now is exceptionally good value! Not that you need them, the blues are about 20~30p on the AH.

You must be the only person who complains about more space, more content.

Do you know why they made the land masses so huge? So they could add more stuff... more Volan's. More raids, more story...

I do concede that the zones are spread out and this makes leveling longer if you quest like I did, but there are other ways to level too. I do still think there should be at least 20% more xp for leveling from 50~60.

My first character, I leveled slowly, smelling the roses and took three weeks to get my rogue to 60 (didn't have much time to play) and then started my cleric a week or two ago. I am doing every quest in each zone on him. The number of people doing hunt rifts is amazing at the moment. I'm level 54 now and just finished Cape Jule, bits of City Core, and just started Peladane.

You didn't get SL? Shame... Your loss...

I am a more casual player and when my guild has cleared the these raids and have them on farm or when raiders skip a night, I'll tag along and catch up on the three raids that are ahead of me. Heck, I only just managed to finish my 1st expert the other night. Like I said, limited play time.

Do you know how awesome it is logging onto a game and looking forward to soo much content?

EDIT: oh and this... "and you receive like 14 from killing a zone event boss"
Get a guild that pops rally banners when they are near bosses. You can get like 50~60 per night if your guildies are considerate. You get them from DRR too? The chronicle also drops six. Damn, but you sound self-entitled to instant gratification, hey?

I got my characters leveled, geared, and raid ready a lot more quickly in SL than I did in the earlier days of the game. I have more to do. The events are great and the stones come easy, 50-200 a day without a problem. Having a blast.

The only real problem I have at all has to be their forcing clunky mech combat into a couple of the dungeons. Makes chronicles for fun and random queues less enticing.

I got my characters leveled, geared, and raid ready a lot more quickly in SL than I did in the earlier days of the game. I have more to do. The events are great and the stones come easy, 50-200 a day without a problem. Having a blast.

The only real problem I have at all has to be their forcing clunky mech combat into a couple of the dungeons. Makes chronicles for fun and random queues less enticing.

What he said.

OP, I bitched like crazy about the infinity stone grind - you can check my Rift forum posts.

I don't feel the SL game is as grindy at max level. I still have an issue with the leveling speed from 50~60 and hence why I am making most of the 20% buff at the moment.

Coming from a WoW player, who still plays that game, I can definitely say that Rift was a great experience. I liked how they took the classic leveling experience, gave it some tweaks and some zones that had character, and overall the 1-50 experience was grand.

With that being said, I can already see a lot of things I like about Storm Legion. The variety of ways to earn experience, currency, etc is a great change of pace from other games. Ironically enough, Carnage and Onslaught quests feel more 'explorational' and dynamic than GW2 did. I loved what GW2 did, but I feel the Storm Legion hybrid suits me best. It's traditional questing with a twist.

Turns out that twist is enough to make it feel completely different (for me). Kill quests still aren't exciting, but finding them does feel more like something I'm engaged in and a challenge to complete them. Having more out in the world, you find it and do it quests is a more immersive and engaging experience as well. Now it feels like your character is important. You aren't just following a list of to-do's from Random Npc Number 5, you are someone who discovers an item in the world and you take care of that shit. Whether it's collecting things to prevent them from falling into evil hands, or destroying things beind used for evil.

I'm only in Cape Jule and already this experience was enough to convince me I will be playing this game for a long time, so I bought a 6 month sub. The landscape to me, is refreshingly different. It fits the style I want in this game perfectly and feels like they put a lot of work into it.

I basically disagree completely, but that's not even a negative thing because the original game was so awesome.

I just hit 55 last night. Im having a really hard time staying on track with the push forward. I always feel im just a bit undergeared/leveled for a zone when im in it too.

This is probably my only complaint so far. Just the shift at 48-50 from normal mobs to SL mobs is insane. I went from being able to very easily handle minor rifts on my own to not being able to handle more than one mob on my own. If I didn't have heals in my spec I would be dead, easily. This is with using planarite to buy the entry level gear.

After completing a few quests with rewards, this is starting to lighten a litte, but I still can't handle minor rifts on my own.

I felt the classes were better & more distinct in Rift classic than in SL, to be honest. That isn't to say everything was perfect in classic. But I didn't feel the hegemony in classic as in SL.

All my tanking souls are pretty much the same now. VK is the only one with a gimmick-- which you can ignore like 90% of the time. Playing a Paragon or Riftblade doesn't feel or operate all that remarkably different from a Champion or Tempest either. Also a lot of changes were just like needless, such as Aggressive Block or spinning Beast Master into a support soul.

Only play my cleric sparingly, but I also felt the changes to Justicar were mostly theatrical.

Also yea, the leveling in Storm Legion is fucking horrible. Classic's approach by where I could hit level cap in less than /played 2 days was definitely preferable and one the initial selling points for me.

Also, vehicles.

Fuck vehicles. I do understand Trion copies a lot from World of Warcraft. But driving around as a helicopter or robot to do a boss fight was like the worst possible thing Trion could have copied from Warcraft. The worst.

Storm Legion is still good and all. Though personally I haven't been as interested in SL from an entertainment or intellectual POV to the same degree as classic Rift.

The zones feel stretched , have a pain in the butt terrain with no decent artistic style and feel like an amateur copy and paste job. The zones are simply way too big for the content they contain and the landscape makes no sense most of the time. It feels like cheese with pits and hills and bushes to me.
Ontop of it some terrain keeps popping and disappearing all the time.

I'm not sure that I agree completely with the "stretched" sentiment - I've felt something similar, sometimes, in the wandering. Whether it's that the new zones have more impassable barriers running through them (I'm looking at you, Necropolis!), or that they're simply so much bigger, or new and unfamiliar, I'm not sure. I think this will pass, as I become more familiar with the key hubs.

The terrain elements popping and disappearing all the time is an NVIDIA GeForce overheating issue, at least in my case.

Originally Posted by Soulslaver

Many of the quests which you receive from npcs require you to visit the same place 2-3 times. I thought such quest design died out with burning crusade...

I'm guessing you didn't do dailies? I revisited the same place in SS easily a hundred times!

Originally Posted by Soulslaver

I also enjoyed hunting for artifacts, which now in sl with the bad and spread out terrain is simply not nearly as fun as before, not to mention that they forgot to add decent rewards like many classic artifact sets had.

I also enjoyed the puzzles, which in SL are now tied to some artifact collections in order to unlock them, basically killing the fun of it.

Not logged in at the moment, but agree on the apparent scarcity of artifacts in the new world. Mind you, there's more competition, and I've found some great semi-secret clusters of 'em - not quite as good as the one off the coast of EI. There was a conscious design decision to integrate puzzles and artifacts so that the puzzles are more work (and more rewarding - see the Bogling Dimension) - I think we'll see more sets get added over time. Personally, I boost my artifact collection by:

Restocking my fish with an artifact lure active

Playing Lootables in the mobile app

Guild artifact-exchange bank tab

AH

Originally Posted by Soulslaver

An expansion for me should not be grindier than the original, build on its strengths (Ember isle quality zone design,dynamic content + drr availabillity, artifact hunting, instant adventures, gaming flow) and try to eliminate most of its weaknesses (rep grind, performance problems, itemization, token reward system grindiness, pvp)

I think other commentators have taken on the DRR and gear-grinding decently - personally, I just reached Expert Hit and Toughness on my main, and have yet to do a DRR. There's a big difference in reward accessibility in any MMO between the start and end of an expansion - and I'm surprised to see so few threads that expressed the opinion that you have. It's jarring to go from significantly overpowering the majority of the content to being asked to really, really work for it. Dunno that having the hardcore(ish) chorus of "I got n easily!" is helpful to the rest of us, but it's there.

Anyway, hope that you revisit Rift in a few months (mebbe after 2.4 or so, whenever the T2 raids come out) and get something a bit more to your liking!

Well my dislike of levels in generals has grown over the years, so I understand that viewpoint. The carnage quests just reminds me a lot of Aion when I played that game. I'd prefer they mix it up a bit more. I still maintain that Rift should be focusing a lot more on the rifts and invasions than they are.

Well my dislike of levels in generals has grown over the years, so I understand that viewpoint. The carnage quests just reminds me a lot of Aion when I played that game. I'd prefer they mix it up a bit more. I still maintain that Rift should be focusing a lot more on the rifts and invasions than they are.

I think rifts are a pretty large focus at max level, but having the same leveling system is pretty stagnant and not progressive. You say they should mix it up more, but they've already provided more ways to level than other games. You have traditional quests, carnage quests, quests you find in the world (both of those that you don't have to 'turn in' anywhere..which is awesome), onslaughts/'invasions', Instant Adventure, Dungeons, Mentoring (omg awesome), etc.

You are swapping between continents for each level? Makes it go quicker.

Ill give this a shot. It kinda seems like a step backwards but wth.

---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 07:53 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Kittyvicious

I think rifts are a pretty large focus at max level, but having the same leveling system is pretty stagnant and not progressive. You say they should mix it up more, but they've already provided more ways to level than other games. You have traditional quests, carnage quests, quests you find in the world (both of those that you don't have to 'turn in' anywhere..which is awesome), onslaughts/'invasions', Instant Adventure, Dungeons, Mentoring (omg awesome), etc.

They have the most diverse leveling experience of any MMO out there.

Ill definitely agree with this. IAs are the way i break the slow drudge of strait leveling outside of dungeons. Once u hit the two new continents though, they are much more spread out. Doesn't feel so instant . Running half way across the map is more like questing. Mentoring down might be an alternative but then i miss out on fresh mats to runebreak and the heaps of cloth i need also. Ugh.

I think rifts are a pretty large focus at max level, but having the same leveling system is pretty stagnant and not progressive. You say they should mix it up more, but they've already provided more ways to level than other games. You have traditional quests, carnage quests, quests you find in the world (both of those that you don't have to 'turn in' anywhere..which is awesome), onslaughts/'invasions', Instant Adventure, Dungeons, Mentoring (omg awesome), etc.

They have the most diverse leveling experience of any MMO out there.

I suppose when I say mix it up more, I'm really referencing the carnage quests. I agree that there are definitely multiple ways of getting experience. I just remember playing and I kept on getting the carnage quests and I just felt like, really more of them? It was a bit tedious. Now I know you can ignore them but for completionist sake I really couldn't

I suppose when I say mix it up more, I'm really referencing the carnage quests. I agree that there are definitely multiple ways of getting experience. I just remember playing and I kept on getting the carnage quests and I just felt like, really more of them? It was a bit tedious. Now I know you can ignore them but for completionist sake I really couldn't

Soooo the truth is out. What you really don't like is your completionist nature. Got it.

Like Fencers said, I would rather just be given the quest to slay Bearodactyls by actually killing Bearodactyls instead of having to run to point A, click things on an interface, go kill Bearodactyls, then run to point B to turn it in. For me, it feels more like adventuring, but for everyone it streamlines the process.

If there weren't carnage quests, it would just be more quests you had to manually pick up from an NPC and no one wants that.